Overdrive

Ramping up its export juggernaut and taking full advantage of WTO entry, China’s economy in the first decade of the new millennium was “boom with no bust.” The information revolution fed more growth, as hundreds of millions of Chinese came online. But the Internet also became a forum for discontent, and the new leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao acknowledged growing environmental and social justice concerns with their call for a more harmonious society. Then, as the credit crisis in the US spread into a global economic crisis, China’s export-dependent growth appeared in jeopardy, and fears of a Chinese crash surfaced. But, as in 1998, China weathered the storm, and emerged in 2010 as the world’s largest exporter, largest foreign creditor, and fastest growing major economy, poised to soon surpass Japan and eventually eclipse the United States as the biggest economy on the planet.

Generation Gaps

It’s Not Just About Economics

The Early Days of China’s Internet

No Dispensation from The Laws of Economics

US-China Symbiosis Fed the Boom

Charlene Barshefsky

Former US Trade Representative

Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky served as the US Trade Representative (USTR)—the chief trade negotiator and principal trade policymaker for the United States—from 1997 to 2001, and acting and deputy USTR from 1993 to 1996. As the USTR and a member of the President's Cabinet, she was responsible for the negotiation of hundreds of complex market access, regulatory and investment agreements with virtually every major country in the world.

Barshefsky is best known internationally as the architect and chief negotiator of China's historic WTO Agreement. She is recognized as a central figure for international business and international economic and trade issues. Barshefsky sits on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations and has also served as a director at a number of well-known multinational firms, including American Express, Estee Lauder, Intel, and Starwood Hotels. She has written and lectured extensively both in the US and abroad.

He saw WTO as a way to accelerate domestic economic reform. As a way to cement it and hold China accountable for it, internationally, which puts additional pressure on China simply as a matter of face. He certainly believed in a more rapid acceleration in growth. I don’t know that even he could have seen how rapid that acceleration was. I always thought, in line with this, that there would be an acceleration in growth. I didn’t see how extraordinarily rapid and robust it would be.